NB! · Art · Museums

At first glance one might think that Apollo's skin is made of bronze or some other metal, but it is simply aged bone

Art · Monarchies · Museums · Saint Petersburg

Busts of Peter the Great by Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Caesarean and Baroque

The sculpture deserves a story of its own. If you are not lucky enough to see it at Versailles, be sure to look at the bust when it returns home to Saint Petersburg. It is one of two busts of Peter made by Rastrelli, but perhaps the most outstanding. In

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Society · Paris

A Baroque bust of Peter I by Rastrelli the Elder is on show at Versailles, at the exhibition opened by Putin and Macron to mark the monarch's sojourn in France

NB! · Archaeology · Museums · Rome · Humour

Silver cup: "Drink until Emperor Hadrian swims out"

NB! · Archaeology · Archive · Museums · Society

Stele inscribed with a law against tyranny; in the upper part, the figure of Democracy crowning the people, 337 BC

NB! · Museums · Science · People · Humour

Laocoön and His Sons: a composition by the Austrian anatomist Josef Hyrtl, who spent his whole life assembling an osteological collection and, as you can see, rather succeeded in it

Black-and-white photograph of the sculpture of Laocoön and his two sons entwined by snakes.

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums · Rome

The sculpture of Laocoön and his sons, found in Rome in 1506, is kept in the Vatican

The sculpture of Laocoön and his sons being killed by serpents was found in Rome in 1506. The work of the renowned Rhodian masters Athenodoros, Polydorus and Hagesandros is now kept in the Pio-Clementino Museum in the Vatican

Close-up of a gold pectoral showing two winged griffins attacking a horse, with twisted gold bands above and below.

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums

Griffins attacking a horse on a gold pectoral in a Ukrainian museum

The lower tier of the gold pectoral (weight 1.1 kg) shows animal scenes, in one of which griffins kill a horse. The necklace is an exhibit of the Ukrainian Museum of Historical Treasures

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums

Apropos the Scythians, here is a sumptuous crescent-shaped necklace: a royal pectoral with sculpted lions' heads at its ends and openwork relief figures of animals, plants and people, 4th century BC

Archaeology · Museums · Heritage · People

Museum director Ivan Bondar evacuated Scythian gold from Kyiv in September 1941

Continuing my series of notes on the feats of scholars, museum staff and cultural workers during the war, today I shall tell the story of a unique collection of historical treasures in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. In the second week of September 1941 the front line came right up to

Silver bowl with gilded relief figures of two bearded warriors and ram-head handles, shown against a dark background.

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums

Scythian silver bowl with gilded figures of two warriors, 4th century BC

Two Scythian warriors in conversation on a bowl with a spherical base and ram's-head handles. Silver, gilt. 4th century BC.

Wooden writing desk with a wheel of rotating shelves and a blue upholstered armchair in a room with a chequered marble floor.

NB! · Art · Museums

Italian 18th-century desk with rotating shelves for working with documents

An eighteenth-century invention you will want to own today. A magnificent desk by Italian craftsmen, made for working with documents